Famed pediatric neurosurgeon and crackpot pyramids theory enthusiast Ben Carson is now challenging Donald Trump for frontrunner status in the race for the Republican nomination for president. As mentioned previously, this new development could really complicate Trump’s core message, which seems to be that he’s a winner and winner’s win so vote for him if you want toContinue reading “The Republican Nomination Contest: Ben Carson, Really? Really? Edition”
Category Archives: politics
Reality Has a Well-Known Liberal Bias, Paul Krugman Edition
Why don’t facts say what we want them to say? Paul Krugman has been on this beat for a long time, notably writing in 2014 about conservatives unable to deal with the fact that the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, was doing what it was designed to do. Here, Krugman catches The Federal Reserve BankContinue reading “Reality Has a Well-Known Liberal Bias, Paul Krugman Edition”
The Agony of Debate: CNBC, Candidates All Manage to Offend
Tonight’s Republican debate was terrible. After listening to several sneering exchanges about how government is always the problem and always screws things up and Obama welcomes violence against the nation’s police and BOO! socialism, I couldn’t get this refrain out of my head: Nasty people saying nasty things and being nasty to each other to the cheersContinue reading “The Agony of Debate: CNBC, Candidates All Manage to Offend”
Boehner Saves the Day, Sort Of
We won’t have John Boehner to kick around much longer and it looks like he’ll succeed in doing the country a favor by kicking his party’s own Freedom Caucus in the teeth before he steps down as Speaker. I still hesitate to give much credit in a situation that involves Republican party leaders saving theContinue reading “Boehner Saves the Day, Sort Of”
The House Leadership Crisis, Explained
Republicans in national politics all basically agree on the same agenda: keep taxes as low as possible, raise the eligibility ages for Medicare and Social Security and decrease their benefits, destroy Obamacare, gut the Environmental Protection Agency, force all women to bring their pregnancies to term regardless of circumstances, allow fundamentalist Christians to impose their beliefs on others, roundContinue reading “The House Leadership Crisis, Explained”
Weekend Links
I’ve been back from vacation a week and a half and am only now re-establishing my routine. I’m teaching all weekend so longer posts will have to wait. In the meantime here are some links that show what I’ve been thinking and reading about recently. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo wrote a series of posts about theContinue reading “Weekend Links”
How Not to Govern in America, A Continuing Series
The most recent Republican push to shut down the government is about Planned Parenthood, the reproductive health and family planning provider that was recently the victim of sting videos purporting to show that Planned Parenthood illegally sells fetal tissue for profit. Planned Parenthood has consistently denied this, and the groups and lawmakers going after PlannedContinue reading “How Not to Govern in America, A Continuing Series”
How Not to Govern in America
John Boehner’s decision to resign as Speaker later next month can help explain why the Republican Party in its current state is incapable of governing. As Jonathan Chait points out, Boehner resigned/was ousted because of extremely unrealistic expectations that he would, or could, force Obama to cave to conservative demands. The story here is quite simple.Continue reading “How Not to Govern in America”
Boehner’s Out and the Crazy Is In
Wow, this is a big deal. Republican U.S. Representative from the 8th district of Ohio and Speaker of the House since 2011 John Boehner will resign from Congress in late October. The man was one of the most useless Speakers in history and will not be missed. He presided over a Republican majority that repeatedly caused theContinue reading “Boehner’s Out and the Crazy Is In”
The Unicornstitution
I’d like to do a series of posts explaining why the belief that the Republican Party, in its current incarnation, is capable of governing responsibly is a dangerous myth. Obviously, there’s a large market for irresponsible federal government at the moment, as there was back in 2000 and 2004. A certain bloc of voters actually wantContinue reading “The Unicornstitution”
Nonsense Consensus 